Kosovo, Serbia and the EU

BORIS TADIĆ, the Serbian president, dined with Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief on September 7th. The menu was spicy and Serbia and Kosovo were on tenterhooks about the outcome. In the wake of International Court of Justice's opinion in July that Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 was not illegal, A draft resolution submitted to the UN General Assembly tomorrow (September 9th) calls for talks on the issue (which is uncontroversial) but also denounces "secession" (which irritates the 22 EU countries that have already recognised the new state). The result of the dinner was inconclusive: an agreement to keep talking.

Since the debate on the resolution is now only hours away, there is not much time for a compromise that both Serbia and the EU can agree upon. (All 27 EU members have harmonised their stance on this for once.) One rumour doing the rounds is that the resolution could be postponed for a week or so. In the end however, since Serbia wants to the join the EU and the EU is not trying to join Serbia, either Serbia will have to give way, or its application to join, which was handed in last December, will stay in a bottom drawer.

In the Balkans, as indeed everywhere else, high political drama makes the headlines. Often though it is hard for people to make a connection between that drama and real life. Balkan Insight which is the region’s best English language news source, has a really great story on just how this problem does indeed affect ordinary people. (disclosure: this correspondent is on the board of its parent outfit, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.)

The story is about the plight of Kosovo’s wine industry. Shattered by the war in 1998-99 it has taken this long to replant and rebuild. Only in the past couple of years has it started to function properly again and for good wines to be produced. Now however, in large measure because of Serbia’s injunction that nothing officially marked as produce of the Republic of Kosovo can be imported into Serbia (and thus transit the country), the industry, a rare source of jobs in resource-poor Kosovo, is stricken. The equivalent of 16m bottles of wine lies unsold in cellars.

“We’ll produce the same amount this year, but we regret that we won’t be able to buy any grapes from local farmers,” Shani Mullabazi, general manager at Stonecastle [a winery], told Balkan Insight. “Our tankers are full and we have millions of litres of wine remaining in our basement,” he added. 

Mullaabazi said the main problem for the wine industry in Kosovo was Serbia. Belgrade is blocking Kosovo’s participation in the Central European Free Trade Agreement, CEFTA, agreement, which links non-EU countries in Central and Southeast Europe.

Serbia refuses to accept Pristina’s participation in the agreement as a separate country, saying it may only be represented by the UN mission in Kosovo, UNMIK. 

Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina have also refused to allow in any imports with the hallmark of the Republic of Kosovo, thereby depriving the new country of key exports markets.

Of course Serbia’s conflict with Kosovo is not the only reason for the plight of the latter’s fledgling wine industry: the financial crisis has hit demand. EU subsidies rig the market in favour of domestic producers. 

Last night Kosovo television news reported that farmers in Rahovec, which is called Orahovac in Serbian, had been protesting about their plight. Many Serbs live in this area so it is a problem both for Serbs and Albanians, in other words, for ordinary people.